By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: July 11, 1992

For 20 years, Leroy Morgan rose early each morning to weigh and mix the dough at the Taystee Bakery plant in Queens. It was hard work, but he made a decent living, raised a family, bought his own house in Jamaica. Now it is over.

Just after 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon, the last packages of hamburger and hot dog buns rolled off the assembly lines at Taystee, ending more than three decades of production at the hulking plant in Flushing and leaving the last of more than 500 employees without jobs, and with dim prospects for new ones.

"I'm like a drowning man grabbing at a straw," said Mr. Morgan, who is 52 years old. "A man at my age looking for a job, with a wife and two kids, a mortgage. I try not to think about it." 'What Do We Have to Lose?'

Taystee, once the largest bakery in the nation, closed despite months of pressure by the city and state, and an against-the-odds effort by its workers, to persuade its owner, Stroehmann Bakeries, not to move it to Pennsylvania. Now the workers, supported by religious and political leaders, are fighting the closing in court, boycotting Stroehmann's products and trying to start their own bakery, mostly because they have nowhere else to go.

"We can't give up now," said Mr. Morgan, whose wife lost her job at a bank two years ago when it moved upstate. "What do we have to lose?"

Both the closing and the workers' campaign have become emblematic of the shifts in New York City's economy that have eliminated thousands of manufacturing jobs, most of them unskilled, many of them held by minorities and immigrants.

From 1979 to 1991, New York City lost 205,000 manufacturing jobs, more than 40 percent, even as its overall economy boomed over most of that time.

"In those halcyon days of the 1980's, this was the forgotten sector of the economy," said Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, the regional commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Stroehmann Bakeries, through an arrangement with the city, bought Taystee in 1988 with $5.2 million in bonds exempt from Federal, state and city taxes, and $780,000 in tax abatements. It decided to move its operation to its bakeries in Pennsylvania for many of the reasons that have led other manufacturers to leave the city. Building Called Antiquated

David H. Allshouse, the company's vice president of human resources, said that the building was antiquated and that operating costs, including wages, utilities and taxes, were too high. Stroehmann, a subsidiary of George Weston Ltd., a Toronto conglomerate, has lost at least $23 million since buying the bakery, he said.

As the operations wound down yesterday and the familiar waft of baking bread began to fade, workers already laid off gathered outside the bakery beside the Van Wyck Expressway to greet those finishing their last day. The workers, embittered and afraid, said they felt betrayed by the company that had taken over, and then abandoned, the landmark bakery.

Stroehmann has offered severance packages and $1,000 grants for retraining, but most workers say they have little chance of replacing their $12- to $14-an-hour wages and medical benefits.

"People have nowhere else to go," said Lynn Bell, a Taystee employee for 13 years, and, as the union's shop steward, the leader of the workers' campaign. "All these people out of work puts a lot of people in the unemployment lines. A lot of people, I know, will end up on welfare."

Several workers, like Jennie Call, have been through this before. Ms. Call started working at Taystee eight years ago after losing her job at a bakery in Queens that moved away. With overtime, she was making more than $30,000 a year at Taystee until she was laid off in March.

Ms. Call, 31, a native of North Carolina with a high school diploma, has looked for jobs at other bakeries so far because she wants to stay in the union and maintain her pension, but there are few openings anywhere.

"I don't think what they did was fair," Ms. Call said. "A lot of people put a lot of their lives in there."

The workers' campaign began in the Maple Crest, a bar near the plant, after Stroehmann, based in Horsham, Pa., announced in November that it would close the bakery.

At first, the workers hoped to pressure the company to reconsider, but as it became apparent that Taystee would close, they concentrated on other options, primarily the opening of an employee-owned bakery somewhere in Queens.

The campaign's leaders, who have received support from several religious and community organizations, including the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Flushing, hope to model their bakery after City Pride, a bakery in Pittsburgh being built by a coalition of church and community groups.

As if to underline their optimism, they distributed job applications outside the bakery yesterday. "I'm happy we have somewhere to go," Ms. Bell said. "Otherwise, we'd go home, collect unemployment and cry."

City and state officials have expressed support. The city's Industrial Development Agency has ordered Stroehmann to repay its tax waivers because it violated its financing agreement with the city, and has voted to use that $780,000 to help the workers open their bakery.

The city's support of the workers has underscored a realization that after years of trying to lure and keep thousands of white-collar jobs, it must do more to keep what manufacturing jobs are left. Company Says It Has Buyer

"It is clear that manufacturing has not and will not have the same role it had 50 years ago," said Wallace L. Ford 2d, the commissioner of the city's Department of Business Services. "But it is still extremely important."

The workers have also sued Stroehmann in State Supreme Court to stop the company from dismantling the plant in preparation for its sale. On Thursday, Stroehmann announced it had reached an agreement to sell the property to another company, which Mr. Allshouse would not identify except to say it was not a manufacturer.

In the meantime, the workers have pressed their boycott, partly out of vengeance, and partly to clear shelves for their own products.

"This is our chance to get back at them," Randy Bowen, a packer at Taystee for six years, said as he sat in front of a Pathmark supermarket in Flushing the other day, handing out boycott fliers. "To hurt them for taking our jobs out of the city, but sending the bread back."

Photo: Former workers from the Taystee Bakery in Flushing, Queens, are trying to open an employee-owned bakery with the help of local religious and community organizations. Workers signed applications yesterday for the new bakery. (Steve Hart for The New York Times) Graph: "Compare and Contrast: The Change in Manufacturing Jobs" shows figures for New York City and United States, 1979-1991. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics) (pg. 22)